- Audio Stream Input/Output
Audio Stream Input/Output (ASIO) is a computer soundcard driver protocol for
digital audio specified bySteinberg , providing a low-latency and high fidelity interface between a software application and a computer'ssound card . WhereasMicrosoft ’sDirectSound is commonly used as astereo input and output for non-professional users, ASIO allowsmusician s andsound engineer s to process their audio via Windows computer software instead of external hardware.ASIO bypasses the normal audio path from the user application through layers of intermediary Windows operating system software, so that the application connects directly to the soundcard hardware. Each layer that is bypassed means a reduction in latency, the delay between an application sending sound to the sound being reproduced by the soundcard. In this way ASIO offers a relatively simple way of accessing multiple audio inputs and outputs independently. Its main strength lies in its method of bypassing the inherently high latency of
operating system audio mixing kernels (KMixer), allowing direct, high speed communication with audio hardware. Unlike KMixer, an unmixed ASIO output is "bit identical", that is, the bits sent to the sound card are identical to those of the original WAV file, thus having higher audio fidelity.Interface support is normally restricted to
Microsoft Windows , since other operating systems (e.g. Apple'sMac OS X orLinux ) do not have such mixer latency problems. InWindows Vista ,KMixer has been removed and replaced by a newWaveRT port driver. WaveRT cannot provide synchronized audio to multiple devices and does not support external clocks. [ [http://createdigitalmusic.com/2007/03/22/native-instruments-releases-detailed-vista-compatibility-information/ Native Instruments Releases Detailed Vista Compatibility Information] ]As of 2007 there is also an experimental ASIO driver for Wine, a Windows layer for Linux. This wineasio driver uses the JACK sound server as its audio back-end and allows many ASIO-aware applications to run with low-latency under WINE.
References
See also
*
TASCAM 'sGSIF External links
* [http://www.steinberg.de/324_1.html ASIO SDK]
* [http://www.asio4all.com/ ASIO4ALL] — a free universal ASIO driver for Windows that brings ASIO support to users of virtually all consumer-grade soundcards and integrated audio chipsets. It also supports semi-pro and pro digital audio systems.
* [http://www.asio2ks.de/ ASIO2KS] — yet another free universal ASIO driver for Windows. Project appears to have been abandoned.
* [http://www.TropicalCoder.com/ASIOTestSigGen.htm ASIOTestSigGen] — a simple, free Audio Test Signal Generator utility to test ASIO setups
* [http://www.TropicalCoder.com/MStreamPlayer.htm MultiStream ASIO Player] — a free MP3 Player for ASIO with built-in test signal generator
* [http://www.kxproject.com The kX Project] — third party WDM audio drivers for EMU10K1 and EMU10K2-based sound cards (SoundBlaster Live! and SoundBlaster Audigy 1/2/4 cards)
* [http://support.xmplay.com/file_comment.php?id=549 XMPlay plug-in] — ASIO output plug-in forXMPlay
* [http://foobar2000.org/components/index.html foobar2000 plug-in] — ASIO output plug-in forfoobar2000
* [http://otachan.com/out_asio(dll).html Winamp plug-in] — open-source ASIO output plug-in forWinamp .
* [http://wiki.jacklab.net/index.php?title=Slides_wineasio&redirect=no Information regarding wineasio] - from the JackLab user's wiki
*Juce — an open-source c++ toolkit that includes support for ASIO audio devices
Wikimedia Foundation. 2010.